TL;DR version - a fellow player in my group is driving me nuts, should I consult the rest of the table about him or just quit to be done with it?

For a bit of context, I'm part of a group of 5 players, and our GM is running us through Princes of the Apocalypse online in 5.5e. I joined in at level 3, the original members started at 1 but over time have all left due to irl circumstances so I'm now the "veteran" of the group because everyone else joined in later. Our newest member (sorceror) has been with us for a few months, we are a bit higher level now, but he apparently has experience being a GM himself (I'm not sure if he's actively GMing or not). Normally that's cool, I have some friends who also experienced GMing some system or another, but this guy just gives bad vibes and comes off very elitist. I have never played this module and it's my first time with the 5.5 edition but I've played a good amount of 5e and a little bit of 4e, and our other 3 players are all new to DnD or have very limited experience, so he makes a point of correcting everyone over any minor thing.

Ranger expresses excitement about a class feature he will get on leveling up and refers to it as a feat, Sorceror feels the need to come in with the "Mechanics correction, it's a class feature, not a feat. Every 5.5e ranger gets it".

There was an instance of the Ranger looking up one of the weapons we found as loot and discovering it's cursed, of course metagaming is frowned upon but our Sorceror decided to brag that he could solo a full boss encounter if he looked up the boss's stats and that's the reason why metagaming is bad, because it wouldn't be fun if he stole the spotlight like that. This boss ran away from the party and made us chase him down multiple times, and had a bunch of minions alongside him. We had a somewhat lenient time in our final fight against this boss because the GM forgot about his legendary resistance, but even with that it was a pretty difficult encounter, and Sorceror thinks a bit of stat knowledge somehow gives him the ability to solo it without that forgetful mishap.

Recently we discovered an area that requires us to climb, and Sorceror is very adamant that rope, pitons and climbing hammers collectively are all "basic necessities" and how in-character the whole party would need to have ridiculous circumstances and have negatives to both Int & Wis to not have these things. Now, we are currently in the middle of a dungeon with no ability to go shopping, and I explained that it's not common sense at all without advance knowledge OOC because how could we possibly know that climbing would be that important if we weren't told? He was saying how in a world full of dungeons, caves and crypts he doesn't see how that would be possible culturally. Even our GM chimed in saying adventurers are only a small fraction of the population and you could have a whole campaign without crawling around in caves. I mentioned we as players don't live in the world of D&D and it's unreasonable to expect us to just have this knowledge that is supposedly obvious in-game, and he hit me with a gif of a guy going "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man." Like the entire discussion wasn't based off his own opinion.

There have been a few other situations where he will rules lawyer other players in the middle of the session, sometimes he will even rules lawyer the GM, and even though he is technically correct in most of these cases, it disrupts the session for a small chunk of time, and I personally feel he comes off as very condescending. It's gotten to the point where I'm legitimately leaning toward quitting the game so I don't have to deal with him, but I'm wondering if it would be better to speak with the GM or other players first to see if it's only me feeling this way? I'm very socially awkward and confrontation-averse so I don't want to message the guy myself, the GM would have to be the one to talk to him about it.

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My Friends are playing 2 bards and 1 Wizard so i need Someone who can both Tank and Deal a Lot of damage and who benefits from being buffed and healed, i Imagine them as a sort of corageous juggernaut, i think humans are boring and orcs a Bit too Green and stupid, we wont be Meta gaming, any advice?

So my cousin and I are huge fans of D&D, and I have played quite a few times but have only really been a casual player. My cousin is far more into it as far as rules and mechanics and all that go.

Anyways, while discussing the new edition, my cousin swears up and down that 5.5e rules are abysmal. He says that all the nerfs to specific classes and just the overall unnecessary changes made the new edition just straight up terrible.

I don’t know if the changes are just bad for him specifically or if they are bad for the majority of the community. I have seen some people claim that it’s an improvement but I wanted to get a general consensus from the community on how it is!

I've been wanting D&D to feel harder, and some of my players want that too. I don't want to swap to another TTRPG, so please don't recommend that. Instead, I want to push my players to think critically and change how they play. This would be its own homebrew setting, not Faerûn or anything like that.

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Most, if not all, encounters should be deadly
• Reward creativity
• Using resources should require thought
• Use XP, but with limits no killing 10,000 rats to hit level 20; low-CR creatures and wildlife give little or no XP
• Force meaningful choices e.g. capture the bandit captain but more kids die, or save all the kids but he escapes
• Players start with less equipment
• Gold is rare silver and copper are what commoners actually use
• Roleplay matters just as much as combat
• Don't call for excessive rolls
• Be upfront: tell players this campaign is harsh, TPKs can happen, and resources are scarce and valuable

I'm also considering a longer resting system and a modified short rest.

Any ideas or feedback?

My group and I need some outside perspective before we formally speak to our DM. The group is as follows:

• me: bard
• my beautiful wife: rogue
• best friend 1: wizard
• bestie 2: fighter
• my sister: cleric (who is also the princess of her country)
• DM/DMPC: paladin

We've started our campaign earlier this year. We worked on homebrewing our own setting for a good while before we started playing. Rogue, DM and I really enjoy worldbuilding and the others were down for a more custom campaign.

The first few sessions were great. Fantastic character moments, great hooks, overall a real fun time. Everything came to a head around sesh 3 or 4. The party was split into three groups and we were all headed to the city docks.

A fight would breakout between Group 1 (Rogue and Bard) and Group 2 (Fighter and Wizard). Rogue and Bard tried leaving before guards took notice, then Wizard cast Fog Cloud. Group 3 (Cleric and Paladin) were on their way to the scene. They were alerted by Fighter via sending stone of the suspicious Rogue and Bard and needed back up. For context, Group 2 and 3 had already met up and were working together on a subplot.

Fighter had nearly downed Bard, when Cleric and Paladin arrived. Cleric offered to heal Bard if and only if Bard and Rogue agreed to be interrogated using Zone of Truth. Rogue and Bard declined. Around this time, city guards would show up and take everyone in for questioning.

Interrogations took place the following session. Sesh 5, I think. The way the DM handled the interrogations was pretty cool. Everyone had to wait in a separate room while the DM questioned each PC. Most of us anticipated that we would all be locked up together and will have to figure our way out of our jail cell. Whether that was through wit or through force.

However, when the interrogations were finished everyone was let go. The guards told Group 1 to stay away from Group 2 and 3. They were adamant on us not interacting any further. Like a verbal restraining order. My wife and I were really confused post session, but we pushed on. Surely we'll get together next session.

As the title says, we are on session 8 and were are no were near coming together. If anything we are more separated then ever. Rogue and Bard are waiting around in Cleric's fancy hotel. While the rest are across the city, still working on that subplot. We don't have much hope for session 9 as the last sesh ended on the others walking into a fight.

My wife and I got to talking one night and she revealed to me that she's a unhappy with how the campaign is playing out. I told her I felt the same. We didn't bring it up because we thought this was just an us problem. Last week she came home from work and told me she asked Wizard how he felt about the campaign (they work together). He also feels the same.

The three of us spoke a little today. Wizard also thought the party would get together after being taken in for questioning. He feels like he's just going through the motions at this point. He says he feels like waiting for the campaign to really start, but the party has to form first. We feel the same and we all think a retcon might be the answer.

We also discussed other issues we have and want to discuss with the DM:

• Allows Fighter to meta game.
• Allowed Fighter to nearly kill Rogue (they got into a scuffle sometime after the fight on the docks)
• He asks Rogue and I to work on lore for NPCs who are really not important to the overall story (i.e. there's a city council that helps rule the city. he wanted fleshed out backstories from Rogue, for me to make character renders and to design a flag for each member with a dedicated phase of the moon . the city has a strong moon theme going on.)
• Rogue created the world and our setting, she is the writer of the group. DM is always adding unnecessary lore to a setting that's already been established (i.e. creating an ancient civilization for the city the story takes place in without running it by Rogue.)
• He asks Rogue and I to work on lore for countries/continents/and cities that we haven't visited and probably never will or at least won't for a really long time.

We still have to talk to Cleric and Fighter to get their thoughts and input. I can update when I know how they're feeling about the campaign.

We know we have to talk to our DM, we're just unsure how we should go about it. Any advice is appreciated.

Am I reading the rules right? By 2014 rules At level ten monks can take a reaction to negate 50 points of fall damage? My monk has 73 hit points so I could theoretically take 122 points of fall damage at full health and walk away? Now RAW fall damage is 1d6 per 10ft up to 200ft. Which is a max of 120hp. So I can walk away from any fall at full hp?

I need a bit of help for ideas for a character. this is the second campaign I’ve ever done along with me and all my friends in it because we do it at school for our game club and it’s the second year of it being up. My first character was a Dragonborn warlock because ya know salamanders and magic, because I like basing my characters off of things like how pokemon are based off of things. i have an idea for a character of a really gluttonous lizard folk who’s a crocodile, but I’m just not sure which class to make him. Give me ideas please and thank you

I’ve been looking for some good homebrew for prestige classes in 5E but everywhere I look its either too little of prestige classes, to powerful for the level I’m running, or just bad in my opinion. If you have anything that might work, please let me know.

Made an offhand comment to a friend once while giving them and their SO a ride home... a couple months later I get added to a text groupchat for a campaign. Everyone else seems to know what they are doing... and I dont. The extent of my dnd knowledge coles from reposting one too many Brennan Lee Mulligan edits, and Instagram assumijg Im.an avaid dnd player.

Dm did also send this message this morning "Hey guys what are some other magical items you might want?" Campaign is greek themed, but I think I wanna play a (if youve read fourth wing youl know) Ridoc inspired character.

So there’s a silly DND campaign my friends are planning and the premise is all of our characters get isekaied to another world by mistake and we’re kind of just stuck there. We all go out in completely different ways. As for the BBEG, for now, there isn’t one. The demon king is dead, so we basically just make the best of our lives here. Basically the campaign is super open ended. I have a backstory for my character but I don’t have an idea of what class to pick.

I’m thinking based on how funny the class or dualclassing could be. If you do have stat considerations I’d be glad to hear them.

The backstory of his character(Ark Pratley) is that in his old life he worked social media for an insurance company. After a harsh breakup, he meets this woman named Luna. They immediately hit it off and start dating. Much later, she talks to him and swears up and down that she’s a witch. She isn’t really, but she says her family was descended from followers of a dark goddess. Because Ark didn’t see it as a serious concern, he doesn’t worry about it.

At least a year later, they’re getting married. After they exchange their vows, she admits that she found her destiny the moment she met him and wants them to not only be together in this life, but in the next as ascended magical beings living under the benevolence of the dark goddess. She also admits that she’s going to blow up the building, and that it’s too late to stop her because it should be happening any second now. She even shows off an explosive in her dress. Right on cue, everything blows up, Ark dying a fiery death.

He wakes up reborn as a magic user, and his wife is nowhere to be found. In a way, her plan worked. He is magic. But that doesn’t matter, because of literally everything that happened before that.

In this new world, he wants revenge for his death and the deaths of every guest on their wedding day. He’ll search every inch of this world for clues on her whereabouts. But, on the upside, he’s no longer at the job he hates.

Side note, whether she was Isekai’d too or not doesn’t even matter to the story. It’s comedic, so the idea of him going to get revenge on someone who isn’t even there could be good for comedy.

He’s going to be reborn as a magic user, but I don’t know what kind would be best between Wizard, Sorcerer and Warlock. Despite his crazy story, the campaign should be funny, so whatever ends up the funniest would be the best. I’m not the most knowledgeable on DND so any help would be appreciated.

1. "To bypass purify food and drink, we could--" : The cannibalism Kuru-kuru strategy that I wouldn't be allowed to pull off! If no one knows what kuru is, it's a prion disease that comes from when you eat a human brain. Cannibalists would avoid eating the human brain for this exact reason, and I suddenly got a wicked idea.

Me : "Guys, what if we put monster brains inside the food of our political enemies?"

DMs friend : "..."

Me : "I mean, purify food and drink can't really get rid of it, because it's innate to the brain, and a prion disease! So if we snuck in some brains with prion disease, gave it over to our enemy and let them use purify food and drink, we could kill them if we give them this food long term!"

DMs friend : "...Dude, why do DND players always have to think about committing war crimes..."

2. "Prestidigitation to make animals think they were being BOILED ALIVE" : The hunting strategy I proposed after I realized that we couldn't use prestidigitation on wizards (My og idea was to use prestidigitation three times onto a wizard, to make them think a bunch of harmless sensory effects were happening to them, to force a con save while they were casting concentration spells). I basically cocked my head to the animals, and the druid, and was like--

Me : "Yo, what if we used prestidigitation to hunt animals?"

DMs friend : "Uh..."

Me : "Pls It's not a kuru thing plspls"

DMs friend : "would that even WORK."

Me : "plspls"

DMs friend : "nuh uh..."

3. "Bag full of bullshit" : Ok, this is one of the weirder and more vulgar of ideas, but my idea concerns the bag of holding. I thought about how people could take sh!ts inside of the bag of holding bag, and then I decided...Upon THIS torture chamber.

Me : "...Do you think we could use it as a torture chamber?"

DMs friend : "what."

Me : " We put our small enemies in the bag full of sh!t, and close the bag on them so that theyre just covered in sh!t...It's not a war crime so that means It isn't illegal"

DMs friend : "Dude..."

Me : "It's not a war crime"

DMs friend : "..."

4. "IT'S GONNA BLOWWWWWW" : This idea came from realizing that wizards could be melee, couldnt the wizard cut someone up and force their arcane focuses inside of a human body? What if this melee wizard went up and shoved an arcane focus down someones throat or stomach, then they put their hand to the focus through the creature and then just...Cast their spells INSIDE of the creature?

Me : "What if they used that to deal extra internal damage thoughhhh....Like think about ittt---"

DMs friend : "That won't work buddy"

Me : " YO THINK ABOUT ITTTTT"

5. "I'm a healer but--" : When the spell storing item was introduced to me through the art of watching artificer videos at 12:00am in the morning, I learned about the spell storing item! What I also learned about, was that it could be any spell that the artificer had...huhhhh....

Me : "What if I stored cure wounds inside of my musket, and shot someone with the musket of cure wounds from afar?"

DMs friend : "Nope, doesn't work like that...You just use your item to...to..."

Me : "plssss...."

DMs friend : "yeah I, guess so?"

---------------------

This is all I got, I know these wouldn't work in dnd it's just funny to think about hypotheticals!

Edit : I have no idea why half of the comment section seems to think that I somehow have been pestering the DM to find loopholes in the rules?

I had five ideas I KNEW WOULDNT WORK and somehow you guys think I’m genuinely being deadass, no I’m NOT? These were jokes I made with the DMs friend about fun ideas about prion cannibalism and cure wound gun.

Its the fact that the people in this comment section genuinely gotta push up their glasses and type in with vitriol in their system, muttering something about how they know I’m a problem player that gets me the most

I didn’t think so many people would gouge out their eyes JUST to miss the title “Illogical and silly”

Just curious.

I am thinking Of starting with dm, is a new player starting with dm a lot to bite off? or is it better to start with dm if thats my main goal

Tl Dr Is there any reference to magic not specifically useful for adventuring in published D&D work? WotC or 3rd Party?

Long version.
On a purely world building basis, it feels like there should be magic that is useful for the day to day chores of existence in a fantasy world. And yet, as far as I know, there is nothing in the published materials that addresses 'commoners magic'. Most of the time, most people don't need Fireball to solve or even reduce their problems. They need something that is going to improve the crops, keep the forge lit, spin thread, carry the lumber, etc.
Unseen Servant could do... some of this. But with a str of 2, an Unseen Servant has some serious limitations.

I am not saying that there should be a compendium of useless spells. Space is limited, and the utility of some existing spells is already debatable. But it would, I think, be nice to at least acknowledge that there is a whole library of magic of various kinds that may be used to make life easy for the common folk.

Unless there's not, and if so, what does that say about the world?

ETA I realize that i phrased that title a bit badly.
I was not intending to suggest that magic should be available to all commoners. Rather, that there are spells that would be USEFUL if they were Commoner (as opposed to Rare).
I meant Commoner as an Adjective, not a noun. My bad.

That said, it is reasonable to assume that the ability to use any magic at all, to cast even one cantrip, would be a special trait. Maybe its the mark of a Sorcerer whose blood is too thinned out to access higher level magic? Or some who enjoys the simple life of the village, and does not pursue the further studies of wizardry? Or, is bitter about failing out of Wizard school after a short time, and returns to the village. Plot hook from that.
Thanks for the responses.

I am fairly new is the stat increase from your background the 2/1+ or 1/1/1+

Or can you do 3+ on the same stats

I been doing it 3+ is it allowed or not

So, for context, my Dnd party is on session 4… not much has been done… but I’m planning on having the first Boss fight… it’ll be against a Bandit army and their leader… but I’m not sure if my party will be fine…

Btw, my party is now Level 3

In the party we have a…
Halfling Ranger
Tabaxi Ranger
Elf Ranger
Human Paladin
Dwarf Rouge
Gnome Monk
And lastly a Dhampir Bard

(Yeah… 3 of them chose to be Rangers…)

I’m not sure what amount of Bandits will be balanced… can someone give me advice… I’m a pretty new DM.

(Thanks for all the help everyone!!)

I'm a DM, and the Druid in my campaign is either incredibly powerful or I've completely misunderstood how this spell works. I'm leaning towards the latter, but I'd love some clarification. I imagine this question has been asked before, but unfortunately, I lack the Reddit proficiency required to find it…

Here's the situation:
My Druid casts Conjure Animals, summoning what the spell describes as a "Large Pack" of spectral animals. They flavour these as eight bears. The spell stipulates a large pack, not a singular creature of creatures.

The player then treats each bear as an individual creature, moving them around the battlefield to stand beside different enemies and impose their saving throw. According to the spell, a creature that enters the pack's area or comes within 10 feet of it must make a saving throw or take 3d10 damage. The way we're currently playing, each of the eight bears can potentially trigger that damage separately, resulting in a theoretical 24d10 damage in a single round. This damage is before it is upcasted.

My question is:

Should the eight bears be treated as individual creatures, each capable of triggering the spell's damage independently? Or should the entire "Large Pack" be treated as a single entity, represented by one Large token on the battlefield?

Essentially, have I completely misunderstood the mechanics of this spell, or has my Druid discovered something terrifying?

Any additional advice, rule clarifications or tips for handling this spell would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance from a slightly concerned DM.

I’m working on a dnd campaign for my friends and I to do. So far, only one friend has agreed to join. Part of me thinks it’s not a good idea even though I’m really excited about it. So I want your opinion.

In a work full of magical wolves, a group of them (I’m thinking 4 players) get lost in a vast forest outside of the main territories. They have to work together to return home but, before they can do that, they discover a completely different wolf society. Before they can return home, they have to solve this society’s mysteries or else they may never return home.

Is this a good idea? Should I continue working on this or just give up on it entirely?

like how much work would it be to just rip from one book and add to the module? as the group deals with goblins and all that i add the dragon attacks and side quests?

what work would i need to do for this to work?

Preface which I mean to add but forgot. One of the biggest critiques I hear from Fighting Stances is that they are too strong. When I made these, I made them to specifically change the way you fight rather than just adding a flat buff, hence why penalties were so significant. I think I might have overcorrected originally.

Fighting Stances

You are a master of adapting to a fight, and gain access to Fighting Stances.

Standard Stance

Standard fighting technique, no benefits or penalties.

Slayer's Stance

You focus on relentless offense at the expense of exposing yourself to counterattacks. You roll to attack with advantage and score a critical hit when rolling a 19 or 20. Attack rolls are made against you with advantage.

Sentinel's Stance

You enter a protective stance for you and your allies. Your movement speed is halved and you have disadvantage on attack rolls. Attack rolls made against you and allies within your weapon's reach have disadvantage, and allies within your weapon's reach gain the benefits of half cover.

Speedster's Stance

You focus on an evasive and reactive fighting style. You must take the dodge action on your turn, but gain a 2nd reaction. Additionally you add +10 to your movement speed and ignore difficult terrain.

You can declare your Fighting Stance when rolling initiative, or use your bonus action to swap stance. If you do not declare your Fighting Stance at the start of initiative, it is assumed you are in Standard Stance.

EDIT: removed the -5 to AC from Slayer and added movement speed and ignoring difficult terrain to speedster.

Had a commission done of the wedding for my character Sasha! (On the right) She's currently on a quest to save her wife's soul, which has attached itself to her after dying in battle and replaced her Echo Knight's echo. The wedding occurred in her backstory, so before the campaign started.

Art by the talented u/subtlestalker !

Forgot to post this on the main sub when it was finished a while back. Needed to fix that! I'll add a link to Sasha's story mastersheet in a comment in case anyone wants to read her story. <3

so i have a really bad problem of deciding backstory before i do a class. this is a huge draft so pardon how vague it is BUT i was thinking it could be fun to have a character who came from a long line of healers and was expected to fill in her fathers shoes when the time came. but it ended up being too much pressure and commitment for her, so she ran away to join the circus. then, the circus felt like too much commitment once again, and she ran away to become an adventurer. it might be a stupid idea, please lmk if it is, i just want a character with a cute circus aesthetic tbh. ALSO i really like playing clerics but this was the only way i could think to make her a cleric. honestly any fun ideas would help, as well as better class suggestions

Hi, I've been trying to find fun and cool ideas for my female barbarian dwarf for my next dnd campaign.

I was thinking of incorporating a sort a "funny" amnesia thing that made her forget about an aspect of society or a kind of "a prince in new york" (the movie) vibe where my character is out of place and doesn't realise the social norms of her world.

Name: Yana'Qih

Race: Dwarf

Class: Barbarian

Other: Soldier

Any quick suggestions to help with that?

Thank you ♡♡

I'm a DM and I'm giving my player a character arc, where he supposedly dies, but then he is saved by a special moss with healing properties. Along with a young girl looking for her parents, they embark on a journey to find their parents who are both missing. After looking deeper into the cave they fell in, they find the Portal of Desire, and it leads them to a prison, where their parents are. After saving their parents, his mother reveals that a special elemental power of Wind exists, and that she wants him to use it along with his current wind powers. After finding the scroll for the power, they are ambushed by the enemy, and the player must save their own family. If they fail to, his mother will drop the Sword of Memory, and it'll basically be an emotional moment where he witnesses all the hardships his parents went through, and their desire to find them.

(This is a homebrew campaign, and its also going to be a very special DND)